New fronts for state-funding of entrepreneurs
We should be bitter.. A lot of our money – that is the money of the state – that is put up to support new projects, is going down the drain. It is because we are not disseminating this money transparently, nor wisely. Let’s take Teknogirisim Fund, set up by Turkey’s Industry Ministry (Sanayi Bakanligi), which translates to “technology start-up funding” distributing USD ±30 million this year. Each satisfactory project (mostly in ICT but not only) receives 75% of its 12-month budget funded up to 100k TL in total in subsidies (±65k USD). Last week, the...
read moreDone with Facebook revolution.. What next?
Wael Ghonim and Julian Assange may be the two big names behind the Egyptian revolution. The two were excellent in interpreting the fascinating power of digital networks into social networks, and networks of actual human interactions every day on the streets of Egypt. Julian’s Wikileaks topped people’s (im)patience for the dictatorship, while Ghonim seems to have dripped a nice little last drop in the tension building up. What is next? Should Egypt settle for a new powerful one-man-show? Are people ready to delegate their rights to governance to a new regime in formation led by...
read moreDragonfly Effect
Worthy causes well crafted attract focus and attention from worthy audiences...
read moreTime of weGOV is approaching
I was at Personal Democracy Forum, Europe conference last month. There are three areas of work I can disseminate: 1) open data/transparency 2) deliberation, and 3) smart public applications. Deliberation effort is essentially our path to direct governance. Deliberation can’t happen healthily without transparency. Hence the importance of the first. What is thrilling is that in one year’s time, there is much more belief and hype (is this a bad word?) around online direct deliberation becoming a tangible alternative to representative governance. PDF organizers seem to be at the...
read moreMovie on Direct Democracy
UsNow is inspiring: it’s a documentary convincing us why the world may be better if we made decisions together. One part of it delves into Participatory Budgeting with cute Sophia Parker explaining the benefits of this exercise. Participants stop blaming public administrators for being too lose with money, or too strict where they would have liked services – and after all – they become more respecting and constructive citizens. She also mentions that the difficulty in exercises like this is not the pitching of ideas (hundreds come out quickly) but the prioritization and...
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